Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks (Complete)

Hotel de Louvre, January 6th, 1858.--On Tuesday morning, our dozen trunks
and half-dozen carpet-bags being already packed and labelled, we began to
prepare for our journey two or three hours before light. Two cabs were at
the door by half past six, and at seven we set out for the London Bridge
station, while it was still dark and bitterly cold. There were already
many people in the streets, growing more numerous as we drove city-ward;
and, in Newgate Street, there was such a number of market-carts, that we
almost came to a dead lock with some of them. At the station we found
several persons who were apparently going in the same train with us,
sitting round the fire of the waiting-room. Since I came to England
there has hardly been a morning when I should have less willingly
bestirred myself before daylight; so sharp and inclement was the
atmosphere. We started at half past eight, having taken through tickets
to Paris by way of Folkestone and Boulogne. A foot-warmer (a long, flat
tin utensil, full of hot water) was put into the carriage just before we
started; but it did not make us more than half comfortable, and the frost
soon began to cloud the windows, and shut out the prospect, so that we
could only glance at the green fields--immortally green, whatever winter
can do against them--and at, here and there, a stream or pool with the
ice forming on its borders. It was the first cold weather of a very mild
season. The snow began to fall in scattered and almost invisible flakes;
and it seemed as if we had stayed our English welcome out, and were to
find nothing genial and hospitable there any more.

Dettagli